FIREMEN AGGRIEVED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20977, 14 September 1931, Page 10

FIREMEN AGGRIEVED.

RAILWAY PASSES REFUSED.

DEMONSTRATIONS HAMPERED. WORK IN REDUCING LOSSES. The Government's ad ion in refusing lo issue free railway passes lo firemen for the purpose of attending demonstrations was criticised on Saturday evening by .Mr. 11. K, Follas, superintendent of the Devon port. Fire Brigade, at the annual smoke concert of the Mount Eden Brigade.

Mr. Follas referred lo the Dominion's huge yearly fire. losses. The brigadesmen were going to try and help tho Government to reduce that, loss, lie said. The United Fire Brigades' Association was now 53 years old, and in that period the work of tho volunteers had been a credit t.> New Zealand. It was a strange fact that the Government, had given each superintendent a number of forms lo fill in after each fire to' try and get to the bottom of the lossei, and yet the only way it appreciated the services of (ho volunteers was to prevent them from endeavouring to become more efficient by stopping thnm from holding a demonstration. " How can the Government expect the volunteers to be. fully efficient if it does not encourage them to gain more knowledge?" Mr. Follas continued. "Must the demonstrations, which we have previously held every two years, stop because we take up a few seats on the railway '! These demonstrations have been the means of making the. brigades of tho Dominion as efficient as they are to day. The Government even takes from tho advisory superintendent his railway pass. It is not the volunteer brigades that have been the cause of the fire losses, nor the permanent brigades, and it will not be their fault if the losses are not reduced."

Mr. R. J. Mills, who is chairman of the Fire Brigade Committee of the Mount Eden Borough Council, expressed his astonishment at the Government's action. He said lie remembered that when he was in the brigade it was rocognised that the demonstrations were tho principal means of maintaining efficiency.